Jesus and the Good Capitalist(s)

The high responsibility of anyone teaching from an ancient text, such as a minister explaining a parable from the Bible or a lawyer applying the U.S. Constitution to a case of first impression, is to understand and translate/contextualize that text to modern ears with as great an accuracy and care as possible. This high responsibility was pounded into me during my three years at seminary while earning my Master of Divinity (MDiv) and becoming a licensed minister, as it was during a prior three years at law school earning my Juris Doctor (JD) and becoming a licensed attorney. Because I wear both hats I can say – and it’ll come as no surprise to you – that some ministers and lawyers handle this high responsibility better than others.

In your reading of ancient texts, like the Bible, have you ever wondered, “How would Jesus speak to us today about how we run our businesses?” Or perhaps more broadly, “How would Jesus speak to us today about how America runs capitalism?” I have. I have also found solid guidance to those questions in a parable from the Biblical book of Matthew, often referred to as “The Parable of the Vineyard Owner" (Matt 20:1-15).

My intent with this essay is to accurately and carefully apply that ancient text parable of Jesus to those two questions in a way that modern ears might hear, understand, and be equipped to act upon. I hope you find that I have been faithful to my high responsibility of understanding and translating/contextualizing.

We’ll start with reading this parable as it’s written in the New Revised Standard Version (formatted just for easier online reading).

For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’

So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’

They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’

He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’

When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’

When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’

But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ (Emphasis mine)

Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard by Jacob Willemsz. de Wet (c1610-c.1671)

A Modern Problem

A story is told of Dan Price about when he was the CEO of Gravity Payments, a financial services company located in Seattle Washington that he co-founded at the age of 20 with a brother. Dan had long been a hip entrepreneur with shoulder-length hair and Brad Pitt features that looks every bit the west coast tech success story that he is. Rooted in his strong Christian upbringing, Dan knew it was his responsibility to treat his employees well and had prided himself in doing so, or so he thought.

Late in 2011, six years into growing Gravity, Dan was 27 and pulling in a steady annual salary of a little over a million dollars. One afternoon Dan spotted Jason Haley on a smoking break outside the office. Jason was a Gravity employee, a 32-year old phone tech earning about $35,000/year. Dan saw Jason was in a foul mood and as Dan approached he asked Jason, “Seems like somethings bothering you, what’s on your mind?”

That’s when the truth spewed out. Jason bared his soul, if not a national sin.

“You’re ripping me off,” he responded. Dan was taken aback. Jason is shy and not prone to outbursts.

“Your pay is based on market rates,” Dan said. “If you have different data, please let me know. I have no intention of ripping you off.”

“The data doesn’t matter,” Jason responded: “I know your intentions are bad. You brag about how financially disciplined you are, but that just translates into me not making enough money to lead a decent life.”

What was Dan’s response to being slapped with this truth? As Paul Keegan, who tells this story in an article for Inc. Magazine wrote: Dan walked away shocked and hurt. For three days, he groused about the encounter to family and friends.

“I felt horrible, Dan said. “Like a victim.” . . . Yet the more people tried to cheer him up about his wage policy, the worse Dan felt. Finally, he recognized why: Jason was right—not only about being underpaid, but also about Dan’s intentions. Dan’s vision and version of fiscal responsibility, particularly after Gravity was nearly wiped out by the Great Recession, meant keeping a lid on wages, even after the economy recovered. Dan reasoned that low wages would help the company survive in the event of another downturn.

Dan's quoted as confessing, “I was so scarred by the recession that I was proactively, and proudly, hurting my staff.”

An Ancient Problem

Our parable may sound like a stretch to our modern ears, as if describing a purely imaginary situation. But that’s far from the case. Surely you’ve driven into a Home Depot parking lot or passed a corner gas station and seen a huddle of day laborers clamoring around a pickup truck competing for a day’s work. Our parking lot laborers are the economic ancestors of this parable’s marketplace men.

Apart from the vineyard owner’s generosity, this parable describes the kind of thing that happened frequently at certain times in Palestine. For example, the grape harvest ripened toward the end of September, and then close on its heels came the rains. If the harvest wasn’t gathered before the rains broke, the harvest could easily be ruined. So to get the harvest in often became a frantic race against time and any worker was welcome, even if for just a concentrated hour.

A denarius was the normal day’s wage for a day laborer during the time of Jesus and the writing of the parables. The exact worth of a denarius is up for debate because it fluctuated, just like our current dollar, Euro, and peso. But whatever the exact amount, its value falls between $2-$4 US dollars. A day’s income of $2- $4 dollars sits just above the World Bank’s current global poverty line of $1.90/day (of which about 10% of the world lives on) but relatively far below the average global living standard of $5.50/day (of which about 50% of the world lives on). At best this is barely survival living; certainly not an income that leaves breathing room or that one can afford to skip.  

There’s no evidence the marketplace men of Jesus’ parable were street corner idlers, lazing away their time. The marketplace was the equivalent of the labor exchange. A man arrived first thing in the morning, carrying his tools, and waited until someone hired him. Like those in the Home Depot and gas station parking lots. The men who stood in the marketplace wanted and waited for work. The fact that some of them stood on even until 5:00 o'clock in the evening suggests how desperately they needed work, and how desperately they didn’t want to return home empty-handed to wives and children.

Day laborers during this time were the lowest class of workers, and life for them was always desperately precarious. Frankly, slaves and servants of those days had it better. At least they were attached to a family with some wealth. They were at least within a group. Yes, their fortunes would vary with the fortunes of the family, but slaves and servants were never in imminent danger of starvation in normal times. It was simply a different world for day laborers. They were not attached to any group. They were entirely at the mercy of the chance employment They and their families were always living on the semi-starvation line. With a daily wage of $2-$4, to be unemployed for just one day meant the family went hungry. Who can set aside for a rainy day on $2 - $4? Literally, no one who has to go it alone. For these day laborers, to be unemployed for a day was a disaster, and the vineyard owner likely knew that.

An Ancient Problem Solved

This parable focuses on the goodness of the owner and the envy of those who thought they should get more for their work. The key to interpreting this parable is verse 10: those hired first thought they would receive more. And the place where we, as careful thinkers, engage this parable is around its themes of envy, justice, and kindness done to others.

Why is kindness often the occasion for jealousy? Why do we too often find it difficult to rejoice over the good fortune of others, and why spend any time at all calculating how we’ve been cheated?

More specifically, this parable is about generosity. That’s the reason it opens with the words, “The Kingdom of God is like.” You know the kingdom, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This is the kingdom we humans are charged with bringing down from heaven and establishing here on earth, which we do when imitate the character of God when we deal with each other. The better we do our job, the more of the Kingdom we have on earth. But God’s Kingdom, with its focus on communal love, can’t be experienced as long as we’re comparing ourselves with others, or calculating what is due us, or being envious of what others received. We need to be generous with each other, whether in the family of faith or not.

Justice is critical and can’t be sacrificed, but it’s time to polish our understanding if not definition of justice. Justice is not some cold standard by which the poor are kept poor. We claim we want and are working toward justice, but too often we dress up and parade as justice what is really jealousy, or we use justice as a weapon to limit generosity. I’ll say that again. We must stop dressing up and parading around as justice what is really jealously or using justice as a weapon to limit generosity.

Justice requires positive action seeking the good of all persons, especially the poor. True justice, that is, God's justice, seeks mercy and ways to express love. This parable teaches us to give up envy and calculation of reward in favor of embracing and imitating the character of God. Those who worship the God Jesus points to must imitate that generosity, not begrudge it. Imitating God is how we will receive the answer to that prayer, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

The climax of this parable, or “the mic drop” is with verse 15: “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” The vineyard owner correctly asserts his right to pay the workers not strictly on their merits but also on the basis of compassion. Why should his generosity be condemned as a slight or an injustice by others? Of course Jesus pointed to a God of justice, but in his vision of God, the divine compassion greatly outshone the divine justice.

There may be some among us who’s sense of justice is still offended by the vineyard owner paying all the workers the same wage. Perhaps you feel those who worked longer should be paid more. I’m not going to go to the mat with you on that and I suspect neither is God if, IF, as the vineyard owner you chose to pay a denarius to those who worked one hour while increasing the pay of those who worked longer. That would certainly be generous of you and a good imitation of God’s character. After all, it’s your money and are you not allowed to be generous with what belongs to you?

A Modern Problem Solved

Let’s circle back to Dan Price, we don’t want to leave him hanging. What about him? Is he not allowed to be generous with what’s his?

Dan did a lot of soul searching after his encounter with Jason. He also did a fair amount of justifying, dithering, and vacillating, before turning to number crunching and more soul searching. He eventually moved on to gathering courage and pulling the trigger.

In April of 2015 Dan launched a media frenzy and exploded onto the national stage when he announced a $70,000 minimum annual wage for all 120 employees of Gravity. Moreover, in order to fund the wage increase without layoffs of employees or price increases to customers, Dan slashed his own annual salary of $1.1M to $70,000.

As of today, 10 years and a world-wide crippling pandemic after Jason opened Dan’s eyes, Gravity has opened a second location in Dan’s native Idaho, a third location in Hawaii, and is successful by every typical business metric. Those metrics include year-over-year revenue growth and profits, customer satisfaction and retention, and employee satisfaction and retention. Gravity is also successful as measured by non-traditional but significantly meaningful employee-centric metric. Those include employee happiness, engagement, increased home ownership, decreased commute time, increased 401(k) contributions, and increased family formation and stability, and the fact that the employees got together and bought Dan a new car as a thank you gift.

Dan’s lesson and application of generously has come with costs. A handful of executive level employees quit almost immediately because they felt the rank and file shouldn’t be paid as much as them, and his co-founder brother sued him. The critics, of course, attacked immediately and are expected to continue. But overwhelming the critics are the fans and supporters, who see that capitalism done right isn’t a slur and God actually cares about how we do business.  

We tell the story of Dan Price in our book Better Capitalism, which I co-authored with Aaron Hedges, to contrast the difference between what we call plantation system economics and partnership economics. “Plantation” in our usage refers to a winner-take-all economics that exploits others for self-advantage. “Partnership” concerns an economic practice of mutuality that contributes to the common good while attending to one’s own interest.

Plantation system economics was what Dan was practicing, like so many American businesspeople have been taught to do. After his confrontation with Jason and the truth of what Dan was doing, he started his transformation toward Partnership Economics. As I studied the parable I saw that jealousy is an element of a plantation system and generosity is an element of partnership system. I am grateful for this opportunity to learn that lesson. I trust it’s a lesson each of you join me in learning today.

Jesus Talking to Businessman (circa 1945) by Harry Anderson

How Might You Hear Jesus Speaking?

Both the vineyard owner and Dan Price are examples of business leaders practicing a better capitalism. You don’t have to be the business owner or boss to practice a better capitalism, we can all participate in countless little, and big, ways. In doing so, our examples of imitating God’s generosity shines a light for all of us working our way toward being better businesspeople and better capitalists. God cares about how we do business.

Indeed, the most difficult part of our journey, like Dan’s journey, is likely finding the courage to make the change we know is necessary. My hope in writing and sharing this essay is that every businessperson, indeed, every human, finds their courage to fully imitate God’s compassion and generosity, including, and especially, in their business dealings and our wider capitalism.

I'll leave you with two personal questions to think through: "What do you hear Jesus (or the Jason in your company) saying to you about how you can help create the Kingdom of God in your business?" and "What do you hear Jesus saying to you about how you can help create the Kingdom of God through a better capitalism?"

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